“No.”
Why the hell did he think she wanted to get drunk? To forget, that was why. To forget a young man with an ecstatic grin and eyes as brown as an otter. Eyes that she had watched glaze in death...
“Oh no. There’s more to it than that,” he said, clicking his tongue. “I know you inside out.” He recrossed his ankles, but did not open his eyes. “Tell me.”
“If I did, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“I don’t believe you’ve never seen these betting receipts. I don’t believe you’ve never defrauded your customers, or that you’ve never smuggled your wine out of Rome to avoid paying taxes, and that’s why I love you, my darling, and that’s why I know that when you marry me, life will never be dull—”
“See a physician, you have a fever.”
“—and I know, equally, that I’ll never be able to trust you with money or business, but I do trust your judgment, Claudia Seferius. What is it about this morning that bothers you?”
“You really want to know?” Claudia drew a deep breath. Stared up at the celestial Archer. Let her breath out slowly to a count of five. “What bothers me, Orbilio, is that a woman was murdered today and the wrong man took the blame. A young man who, conveniently, is not around to tell his side of the story.”
“You think Labeo—”
Claudia snorted. “That arrogant oaf?” In her mind, she heard again the sickening thud as the general’s boot thudded into the dead boy’s ribs. Heard the youth’s exuberant yell as he scrambled down the fig tree on the wall.
“No, Marcus,” she said wearily, “Labeo did not kill Callista.” She thought of her tiny, fair-haired neighbour laid out on her funeral bier in the atrium next-door, cypress at the door, torches burning at her feet. “The thing is, Volso is a domineering drunk and a bully.” She sighed. “Who liked to beat his wife and his children.”
Juno in heaven, how often had she heard them? The muffled screams. The pleading. Wracking sobs that lasted well into the night... Many times she would rush round there, only for the door to be slammed in her face, and the next day Callista’s story would be the same. The children had fallen downstairs, she’d say, or she had walked into a pillar. Sweet Janus, how often had Claudia begged her to leave the vicious brute? One day, she’d told Callista, he will end up killing one of the children.
“Think of them, if not yourself,” she’d advised.
Months passed and nothing changed, until, miracle of miracles, last week Callista called round to confide that she was leaving. Enough was enough, she’d said. Claudia was right. One of these days she feared Volso would go too far and as soon as she’d found suitable accommodation for herself and the children, she would pack her bags and leave.
“So you think Volso killed his wife?” Marcus said.
“No,” Claudia replied sadly, “I killed her.”
She could easily have taken Callista and the children in, but she had not. She’d been too busy trotting round placing bets on boxers and wrestlers, ordering new gowns for the Vinalia in six days’ time, planning parties, organising dinners, garlanding the hall with floral tributes. A battered wife with moping children would have got in the way. Put a dampener on everybody’s spirits.
As surely as Paulus Salvius Volso throttled the life out of poor Callista, so Claudia Seferius had provided him with the ammunition.
Orbilio was forced to admit that when Claudia told him he wouldn’t believe what she was going to tell him, he was wrong. He’d said he was convinced that he’d believe her. But wrong he was.
That Volso killed his wife he could accept. The minute he’d heard that Callista had been found strangled in the course of a burglary, his suspicions were aroused. Having listened to the report of the centurion sent to investigate the killing of the thief, he’d not been at all satisfied with the army’s neat conclusion. Volso’s reputation preceded him and Marcus knew him as the type who vehemently believed that his wife and children were his property, that he would say who came and who went, and that nobody, but nobody, left him unless he threw them out. That was why he’d called on Claudia this evening. To hear her view on the matter.
But that she was in any way morally responsible was bullshit.
In time, of course, she would come to see this for herself, and surely the best way of helping her to reach this point was for her to help him clap the cold-blooded bastard in irons.
“The killing required a lot of planning,” he said.
And together, as the Archer rose and the level in the wine jug sank, they gradually pieced together the sequence of events.
First, Callista, having made her decision, must have somehow given the game away. Perhaps she had started to put things together in a chest. Maybe she’d confided to one of the older children. Who knows? Hell, she might even have lodged her claim in a divorce court, where Volso was just powerful enough to have the scribe report the matter back. Either way, he knew about her plan but did not let on.
Instead, he went out and hired himself a thief. A military man, he’d know exactly where to look and, as a commander of long standing, he would know what type of character to choose. Someone gullible, for a start. Someone who would believe the story he had spun them about having fallen on hard times and how the debt collectors would be knocking at his door any day now to seize his assets. But if he could beat them at their own game...? Stage a burglary whereby the thief was paid handsomely to steal the goods, which he would hand over to the general’s henchman outside in the street to be converted into liquid assets which the debt collectors would not know about.
“How do you know he’d told the boy there would be an accomplice?” Orbilio asked.
“The yells,” she explained. “The yells were to alert the person he believed would be loitering in the street to move up to my back gate in readiness to relieve him of the sack and pay him whatever price Volso had agreed.” She shrugged. “As I said, it had to be somebody gullible.”
Older boys would not have swallowed the bait. This boy had to be new at the game. No one else would have been told to leave the ladder up against the wall and actually left it!
“Except his yells alerted Labeo instead,” Marcus said. “Who had been primed beforehand by his master that on a slaves’ holiday the house might well be a target for thieves and that he was to shoot on sight.”
Perhaps it wasn’t Labeo’s fault after all, Claudia mused. He’d been as much a pawn in the game as the boy, the one lured by greed, the other by pride. The only difference, Labeo was alive.
“So.” Orbilio steepled his fingers. “The house is empty, because all the slaves are out celebrating. It’s just Labeo in there on his own, and Callista, whom Volso had undoubtedly drugged. The boy sneaks in, probably through your garden, shins up the fig tree and over the wall. He then places the ladder so he can make his escape. Inside, he fills the sack with the items he’s been instructed to pick and then, when he’s finished, he screams like a banshee, because it’s vital the accomplice is outside for a quick handover.”
“Unfortunately, the yell alerts Labeo, who finds no trouble chasing him, thanks to the ladder Volso thought to set in place.” Claudia could see why he’d made general. In military tactics, timing is crucial. “Because while we’re all nicely diverted by the robbery and the killing of the thief, the master of the house is free to walk in through his own front door and throttle his wife at his leisure.”
“Ah.” Orbilio plucked a blade of grass and chewed it. “That’s where it starts to get tricky. You see, Volso refused point-blank to give his porter the day off today, and the porter is adamant his master left the house shortly after dawn and did not come back until after the boy had been shot. He knows this, because when Volso came home the porter told him about the robbery and he was actually with him when he found Callista’s body.”